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397 Ayhan Kaya and Ece Harmanyeri CHAPTER 16. Turkey Introduction CHAPTER 16. TURKEY Ayhan Kaya and Ece Harmanyeri Istanbul Bilgi University Introduction Having the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, modern Turkey, with more than 72 million inhabitants, is a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural country, hous- ing approximately 50 different Muslim and/or non-Muslim ethno-cultural groups: Sunni Turks, Alevi Turks, Sunni Kurds, Alevi Kurds, Circassians, Lazis, Armenians, Georgians, Jews, Greeks, Arabs, Assyrians etc (Andrews, 1989). However, leaving aside the attempts made for democratisation of the country in the last decade, the Turkish state has been far from recog- nising the ethnically and culturally diverse nature of the Turkish society. Ethno-cultural and religious minorities in Turkey have been subject to ho- mogenising state policies. As Turkey is a republican country, one could not find official figures about the numbers of ethno-cultural and religious minorities. The article is de- signed to portray the ways in which ethno-cultural and religious diversity has hitherto been managed by modern Turkish state within the frame- work of the discourse of tolerance. Explicating the construction of the Turkish national identity and the modern Turkish state, the article will primarily delineate the constitutive elements of the state machinery as well as the technologies of citizenship. Turkey’s process of Europeaniza- tion will also be scrutinized in order to pave the way to a detailed analysis of the transformation of the Turkish polity from the Cold War years to the Post-Cold War years. In doing so, major challenges against the tra- ditional Kemalist nation-state building process will be scrutinized such as political Islam, Alevi revival, Kurdish revival and Europeanization/globaliza- tion. Subsequently, some statistical information will be given regarding the major ethno-cultural and religious minorities. The term ‘minority’ has a delicate history in Turkey, as it often has negative connotation in the popular imagery. In the text, the term ‘minority’ will be used in both legal and sociological/anthropological framework. Ottoman multiculturalism was usually coupled with the term ‘tolerance’. The concept of tolerance has a very long history in the Turkish context tracing back to the Ottoman Empire. It also has a very popular usage in everyday life. Turks are usually proud of referring to the Millet System of the Ottoman Empire is often known to be the guarantor of tolerance, 397 respecting the boundaries between religious communities. The equiva- lents of the term tolerance in the Turkish language are tolerans, hoşgörü, tahammül, müsamaha, görmezden gelme, and göz yumma. The meaning of the term hoşgörü is depicted in the Dictionary of the Turkish Language Association (Türk Dil Kurumu) as follows: “the state of tolerating every- thing as much as possible.” hoşgörü literally means “seeing (the other) in a good way”. The term ‘tahammul’ is derived from the Arabic root word ‘haml’, which literally means ‘to pick’ or ‘to bear’ or ‘to carry’. For example if one picks a book, or carries a load or a burden, etc. the word ‘haml’ would generally be used; but if one patiently bears a turmoil, or an affliction, or a humiliation, or an indignity, or an oppression, etc….the term ‘tahammul’ would be used. The word musamaha literally means to forgive, and it is even claimed that the word Masih derives from this word in Arabic. Additionally, in Arabic, the word tasamuh transcends the realm of political toleration and connotes personal virtues such as patience and generosity. On the other hand, “görmezden gelme” means “pretending not to see”, and “göz yumma” litereally refers to “to close one’s eyes”, or to condone, excuse. Most of these words used in Turkish as equivalents of the term toler- ance, address at a kind of burden to carry on one’s shoulders, so they all refer to a kind of endurance and forbearance. The very etymologi- cal meaning of ‘tolerance’ also has parallels with the use of its equiva- lents in the Turkish language. It does not seem to be accidental that in most languages in which tolerance has been historically debated, the words tolerance (or its synonym, sufferance) and suffering have the same source. The etymology of the term ‘tolerance’ is also very illustra- tive to understand what it contains. It does not seem to be accidental that in most languages in which tolerance has been historically debated, the words tolerance (or its synonym, sufferance) and suffering have the same source. The Latin word tolerantia comes from tolere, to bear, and tolerate, to suffer, endure, and the same link exists in English (through the synonym, sufferance), in French (souffrir), Italian (soffrire), and even in Hebrew (sevel-sovlanut). This etymological fact happens to be philo- sophically significant. It indicates that there is no tolerance without suf- fering and its overcoming. Tolerating someone means recognizing an irreducible difference, a gap of alienness separating us, which neverthe- less is accepted. This implies a concealed hatred or contest between the tolerating and the tolerated party. By this very otherness, the other represents a challenge to the self in the form of a potential competition over goods, power, moral values, and so on. Nation, State and citizenship in Turkey Since the beginning of the nation-state building process, the primary goal of the main constituents of the Turkish Republic had been the establish- ment of a homogenous nation and a unitary state. In order to achieve this goal, Mustafa Kemal and the military/political elite equipped the state with a superior power over the civil society. Serif Mardin (1975) puts spe- cial emphasis on the statist and centralist character of the Republic in its founding years. He underlines that the Republic was ‘diffident’ in integrat- ing the social forces into the central political system although the local notables, who took part in the National Independence War, and formed a significant component of the first Grand National Assembly, were incorpo- rated into the Republican People’s Party (RPP) and the bureaucracy (Mardin, CHAPTER 16. TURKEY 398 1975: 22-27). To this aim, some religious, ethnic and local claims such as Kurdish Sheihk Sait rebellion (1925) and the Islamist Menemen revolt (a district of Izmir), were suppressed by the state elite on the ground that the social forces were regarded as the sources of decentralisation and political rivalry (ibid.: 23). Therefore, Mardin argues that rather than integration of the social forces into the centre through mobilisation of the masses, the Republican idea to restructure the society was confined to the bureaucratisation and regulation (ibid.). Hence, the Kemalist elite preferred achieve the goal of forming the unitary state and a homoge- nous nation by means of preserving the state’s raison d’étre, and adopt- ing policies to suppress, assimilate and exclude diverse societal group- ings along religious, ethnic and cultural lines. In order to maintain the dominance of the state in political and so- cial structuring over its social rivals, Mustafa Kemal and the state elite adopted policies and programmes to homogenise linguistic, historical and cultural features of the Turkish society and to construct a ‘new na- tional identity’. Ataturk defined the Turkish nation as “the Turkish peo- ple forming the Turkish Republic”. By this statement, he elucidated that every individual who participated in the establishment of the Republic and took a share in the future of it is a Turk (Özbudun, 1981: 18). Atat- urk’s definition of the Turkish nation embraces all the people who live in the lands of Anatolia and Thrace, and feel to be a part of the past and the future of the Republic. That is why his conception of Turkish nation avoids the distinction of any social segment along with religion, ethnic- ity, and sectarianism. In this sense, the republican Kemalist elite were difference-blind, and did not recognise ethno-cultural diversity of the Turkish nation. The defining distinctiveness of the early Republic was Turkification poli- cies, which sought the dominance of Turkishness and Sunni Islam as the defining elements in every walk of life, from the language spoken in the public space to citizenship, national education, trade regime, personnel regime in public enterprises, industrial life and even settlement laws. Having an imperial legacy, many such new regulations and laws referred to a set of attempts to homogenise the entire nation without any toler- ance for difference. It is highly probable that the underestimation of ethno-cultural diversity among the Muslim population of the Republic was due to the preceding Ottoman Millet system borrowed by the re- publican political elite. The Millet system did not consider ethnic differ- ences among Muslims. All Muslims, regardless of their other differences, belonged to the one and the same ‘Muslim nation’. Paradoxically, the successful nature of the Turkish revolution/rupture lays in the continuity of the Ottoman notion of millet. In the years to come following the formation of the Republic, assim- ilationist and/or exclusionary policies of the state elite, which sought to erase social and cultural diversity, continued to render the national identity based on Sunni Islam and Turkishness a dominant role in social and political spheres. The social forces affiliated with diverse religious, ethnic and cultural values were frequently faced with and suppressed by the homogenising policies such as the nationalist Turkish history thesis of 1932, the Sun Language Theory of 1936, the unitarian nationalist education policies (Tevhid-i Tedrisat Kanunu,1924), banning the use of mother tongue and of ethnic minority names, discriminatory settlement laws put in effect on the exchange minorities and new migrants (Iskan AYHAN KAYA AND ECE HARMANYERI 399 Kanunu, 1934), discriminatory citizenship laws granting citizenship ex- clusively to Muslim origin migrants, the imposition of Wealth Tax in 1942, especially on non-Muslims, and the forced migration of Kurds in the east and southeast of Turkey (Kaya, 2007).
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